Down Under
by mrslee
Summary: Olivia and Elliot decide to take a trip down under. EO. One-shot.


**Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure Dick Wolf knows nothing about cricket. SVU belongs to Wolf and NBC. **

**Cricket, Sydney and the rest belongs to Australia.**

**Authors note: My challenge, if I chose to accept it, was to integrate 3 Australian icons and an explanation of what cricket was into an SVU story. Nettie really made my life hard, but because I'm so good (not), I managed to get in 4 icons and a half-decent description. If you still don't understand what cricket is by the end of this and you're still interested, then feel free to Google and/or Wikipedia it. This is Nettie and My shout-out to the best country in the world who just celebrated ****it's**** birthday! **

**Leave a ****Review,**** I really want to know what you guys thought. ****Especially the non-Australians.**

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"No, too cold."

Elliot took a deep breath and dropped the brochure in his hand onto the desk-top. Rubbing his eyes tiredly, he tried his best to restrain himself from strangling his fiancé.

His fiancé who was now fixing him with a cheeky smile as she unwrapped the sandwich Cragen had bought them back for lunch.

"Liv, you've rejected every place I've suggested, what exactly are you looking for?"

Olivia shrugged, taking a bite of her food, "somewhere with nice weather, people and scenery. It's not that hard. Oh, and there has to be at least one beach."

Elliot nodded, leaning back in his chair. He gave a satisfied moan as he stretched his sore muscles, smirking as Olivia watched him appreciatively.

He had given her a list of at least ten countries and she had flat out rejected them all.

Italy, France, Spain, Jamaica, Fiji, Thailand, China and other countries he couldn't remember, had all failed under the Olivia Benson criterion. It was his only responsibility leading up to their wedding; to find a honeymoon destination.

And he was failing miserably.

He had spent the past five weeks at the travel agency down the street from the precinct harassing "Jodie" for the most romantic places that would be perfect for a honeymoon.

_"Take her to Paris",_ she had suggested, "_The most romantic city in the world"_

Try telling that to Olivia.

If they ever needed photographic evidence of a nose turning up at somebody's idea, Olivia had provided the perfect example at each and every brochure Elliot had thrust under her nose at lunch. And this time was no different.

"Liv, there aren't many more islands left in the world for us to go for our honeymoon, and I'm sure the Parisians will be pleased to know that you hate them."

Olivia snorted, shaking her head, "El, I love it when you pout like a three year old."

He narrowed his eyes, but didn't answer. He bit into his sandwich instead and threw the balled up brochure for Canada into Munch's bin.

"Watch it, Detective. You almost hit JFK," Munch said indignantly, straightening his framed photo of the ex-President on his desk.

Fin shook his head, "do you know how creepy it is to have that many photos of an old and dead dude on your desk?"

Munch looked at Fin over his glasses, "Do you know how much I don't care?"

Olivia giggled at the expression on Fin's face, before returning her eyes to Elliot. "El, there's another four months til the wedding, you don't have much more time."

"Liv, baby," he ignored the sound of Fin's lips smacking together from his right, "I've given you almost every option. There's practically nowhere left."

"How about Australia?" Lake suggested through a mouthful of pudding, "My sister went there for a holiday and loved it."

Elliot looked back at Olivia who seemed to be thinking seriously about it. "What'd she say exactly?"

Lake shrugged, wiping his mouth with a napkin, "She stayed in Sydney; loved the Harbour Bridge, Opera House, hugged with some koalas at the zoo. But..."

Elliot's stomach dropped at that, but Olivia was still leaning in interestedly. "But?"

Lake stood up and made his way to the coffee machine, "She hated the cricket."

Olivia looked at Elliot, "Cricket?"

Munch leant back in his chair with a snort, "The sport of our forefathers."

Fin's mouth opened, "you know what cricket is?"

Munch gave him another look, "I know a lot of things my friend. And this is one of them, unfortunately."

Olivia's face still registered eager curiosity, "what's so bad about it?"

Lake and Munch exchanged an "I'm-not-going-to-explain look."

Munch obviously won, because Lake took a deep breath as he dragged his computer chair next to Olivia and Elliot's desk partition. "Well, it's very similar to baseball, except...not."

"Great start," Fin said; ducking the pen Lake threw at him.

"Anyway, there are two teams; 11 players each. Depending on the format of the game, it can go for one day or five days."

Olivia's eyebrows rose, but Elliot was seriously losing interest. "Five Days?"

Lake nodded, taking a cautious sip of his coffee, "For eight hours a day, five straight days these two teams try and score as many runs as they can, before trying to get their opposition out for less."

Olivia cocked her head to the side, ignoring Fin and Elliot who were pretending to fall asleep on their computer keyboards. "Give me the basics."

Lake pulled a piece of paper towards him and stole the biro that Elliot was using to pretend to stab his eyes in frustration, "this is called a pitch," he drew a rectangle in the middle of the page, "and there are two batsmen at any one time," he put a mark at the narrower ends of the rectangle.

Olivia pointed at the two marks, "and that's one team?"

Lake nodded, "and the other team has ten players in the field and one bowler," he put random dots on the paper around the pitch, "and the bowler's responsibility is to try and get the batsmen out."

Olivia frowned, "how do you bowl?"

Lake motioned with his pen as though he could draw the action but thought better of it, stealing the apple Elliot had almost gotten to his mouth. "Hey!"

Lake pointed at Munch, "grab a ruler and pretend to try and hit this."

Munch reluctantly got up from his chair, "and take your bin with you, that's the stumps Olivia. If this apple, or ball, was to hit the bin, or stumps, then the batsmen would be out."

Olivia got up from her chair and sat on the edge of her desk, thoroughly absorbed in the exchange. She wasn't the only one; a crowd had begun to converge in the doorway as Munch set up the bin. Elliot and Fin, by stark contrast were exchanging more and more ridiculously bored expressions.

"Ok, this is how you bowl," and with that, Lake brought the apple from his side, around his shoulder and to the front again. It looked like a one-sided freestyle outside of water.

"If the ball hit the stumps, or the batsman's leg, or if the batsman hit it to one of the opposition on the full in the field, they'd be out."

Elliot snorted, but stopped when Olivia returned a glare over her shoulder, "and they do that until they get the batsmen out?"

Lake nodded, throwing the apple in the air, "until they get all of the other team's batsmen out. All ten of them."

"Wow," Olivia said, giving a low whistle, "doesn't the bowler get tired?"

Lake shrugged, "there's more than one bowler, and they're elite athletes, so they manage."

"And whoever makes the most runs wins?" Lake nodded, "and how do you score runs?"

Lake moved back to the paper he was writing on previously. He drew a circle around the fieldsman and pitch, "If the ball goes over this line, its four runs and if it goes over it on the full, its six runs. And they can score one run each time they run back and forth between here," he drew a line from one side of the rectangle to the other.

"And your sister didn't like it?"

Lake smiled, "My sister fell asleep during Terminator. She gets bored easily."

Olivia laughed, "Her poor husband!"

Lake scrunched up the piece of paper in his fist, "He survived. He loved it though, and he's going back as soon as he can talk my sister into it."

Olivia turned back to Elliot, "I want to go to a cricket match."

Elliot almost fell out of his chair in shock. If she wanted to go to a cricket match then that meant, "You want to go to Australia?"

Olivia grinned, nodding enthusiastically, "Yeah. I do."

"Why couldn't you have brought this up earlier, Chester?"

Lake smirked, putting his feet up onto his desk, "You never asked."

Olivia stood up again, moving slowly towards where Elliot was pouting, "El, the point is, we have a destination now, so quit complaining. And, in end, it doesn't really matter where we end up, as long as I'm sitting next to you on the plane."

She leant down and pressed a quick kiss on his lips, completely ignoring the catcalls and woof-whistles from behind her.

"Well, you'd want to be next to somebody you like," Munch said, "it is an 18-hour flight."

Olivia's eyes widened.

_Oh Shit._


End file.
